


Rescue

by CityOfPaperBuildings



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, mental distress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 16:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CityOfPaperBuildings/pseuds/CityOfPaperBuildings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe there's a light in all this darkness, an anchor while he’s lost at sea, and it’s standing right in front of him, rescuing him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rescue

**Author's Note:**

> This work is inspired by this image: http://cdn03.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/stan-details/sebastian-stan-details-feature-01.jpg and a conversation with the always wonderful sirona.
> 
> As always, this is unbetad so all mistakes are my own.

When the noise in his head gets to be too much and the memories of the Winter Soldier consume him, Bucky goes to the one place his mind is always clear. He pushes open the door to the gym and heads to the cupboard where the bandages and towels are kept. It’s strange, only wrapping one hand now. The task feels incomplete.

Suddenly, light flashes in the corner of his eye and he whirls round to face it. It’s just the sunlight glinting off a mirror. He scowls and throws a towel over it. Bucky avoids mirrors now, where possible. He can’t reconcile the man he sees, the man who looks the same as he did seventy years ago, with the man he is now, tainted by a half-lived, half-remembered life. Sometimes he catches glimpses of old self, the long hair and the deadness behind the eyes. It only lasts for a split second but for that moment he’s him again, the Winter Soldier. Dispatched by the Soviets to end countless lives. He’d watched himself do it, unable to control the hands that pulled the trigger, drew the knife and tightened the garrotte. He was trapped, screaming inside that this wasn’t him, he didn’t do this, but what he saw and did told a different story.

He squares up to the bag and pounds out his hurt and anger. Anger that stemmed from failure. Bucky had never failed at anything until he failed to stop that bomb and from that moment on his life was one let down after another. He’d failed to escape the Russians, the ones who had taken him, captured him and fucked with his head, rewriting everything he was. They’d made him their puppet and he’d danced to their tune.

He’d failed to save Steve.

With that thought he splits the bag in two with one devastating left hook. He takes it down and replaces it with another.

He’d never failed Steve. He’d always been there for him, with him. They’d faced life on the poverty line growing up together, bullies in alleyways and guys far more scary since. But when Steve had relied on him and needed him most, he’d failed. He hadn’t been able to defuse the bomb and as he fell, he’d not been able to stop himself seeing Steve fall too.

There had been times when, as the Soldier, that image would come back to him unbidden and although he didn’t understand what it meant, he understood the pain that came with it well enough. It was like his heart had been torn in two, his stomach clenched and his hands shook. He knew he was all alone in this hell, he couldn’t escape and it was all his fault.

Another bag gets knocked to the floor, sand spilling out across the floor and weary, unsteady on his feet, he hoists up another, not noticing the bandages on his knuckles have frayed and the skin is an angry red.

He did this, he caused all this hurt and pain. He’d left Steve on his own, to face this new world without him. When he’d woken to see Steve looking down on him he was sure he was dead and this was heaven although God knows he didn’t deserve to be there. But once everything had been explained, he realised how alone and frightened Steve must have been. To wake up here, in this strange time with everyone you knew and loved gone? Bucky felt that pain too, a dull ache in your heart, a constant thought at the back of your mind. That he’d caused someone else to feel this way was sometimes unbearable.

But Steve is gracious and warm and kind and he’s just...Steve. Steve, who looks at Bucky like his very presence is a miracle. He doesn’t know how Steve can see him that way, can forgive his transgressions, can hold him in his arms and sob quietly, just once, upon being reunited with the man who for all intents and purposes caused his death.

As the bag bursts and falls to the floor, Bucky does too, an exhausted shaking mess, knuckles bloody and his body drenched in sweat. And this is how Steve finds him - a useless quivering wreck.

-

Steve walks carefully, cautiously, into the gym. JARVIS’ alert about the variance in Sgt. Barnes’ vitals had included a notation on the signs of mental distress he was also displaying and Steve wasn’t sure what to expect. Seeing the collapsed heap of his best friend causes Steve to flashback to his teenage years and all the time he spent in the local boxing gym desperately trying to build some sort of muscle. Anything to help him defend himself, help him defend others and, once he was passed the army medics, defend his country.

He used to watch Bucky in here on Saturday afternoons, sunlight streaming through the old cracked windows highlighting the sheen of sweat across the boys’ brows. Bucky was so light and nimble on his feet, ducking and weaving, almost dancing round the ring making his opponent dizzy. It seemed he could spend hours beating on the heavy bags and never get tired, only stopping because he got bored and then he’d flash a grin at Steve and they’d go and catch a movie.

Steve saw how Bucky filled out, the longer he spent at the gym and he believed he could do so too; he had to, if the army would ever take him seriously. So he came down to the gym when he knew Bucky wouldn’t be there. It was embarrassing enough for Steve that Bucky had had to pick him out of dumpsters and off unspeakably filthy alley floors countless times. He didn’t need Bucky to see him fail at this too.

He wraps up his hands and picks a spot in the back of the room where hopefully he won’t be seen and for the first five minutes it’s going fine. But then, of course, he pushes it and he feels the iron bands clamp around his chest. He falls to the floor, heart hammering and he’s struggling to draw breath. He’s vaguely aware of the manager looking down at him and shouting for one of the kids to get out and find Bucky. Steve tries to protest but he doesn’t have the breath to spare. By the time Bucky arrives, the bands have released him and he’s just a small guy sitting alone and hunched over. Bucky’s heart breaks for him, he knows how embarrassed Steve gets about these attacks. If he could, Bucky would take the sickness from him in an instant. Steve is a good man, the best of men. He’s beyond selfless and if Bucky could become half the man Steve already is then he’d count himself lucky.

Steve looks up at him, abject misery all over his face and he can’t stand how Bucky’s looking at him, with fierce love in his eyes believing Steve is something special, someone worth expending effort on. He’s failed at this, just like he’s failed at everything else in his life. He couldn’t protect his mom when his dad came home reeking of cheap beer looking for a way to vent his frustrations about his crappy life or save her from the pneumonia which eventually took her from him. He can’t fight the bullies that roam the streets, can’t defend himself and can’t even get the Army to take him when men are dying in their thousands. Not that he can blame them. Why would anyone want him? He’s amazed Bucky has stuck around this long, hasn’t grown tired of rescuing him all the time.

Bucky’s always rescuing him...

-

Steve pulls Bucky to his feet and wraps his arms around his sweat-slicked friend. Bucky collapses into the warmth and stability that Steve has always provided, even when he wasn’t 6 ft tall and as solid as a house. He mumbles into Steve’s chest, words spilling out of his mouth before he has time to filter them.

“What did I do to deserve you, Steve? I’ve done terrible, awful things. I can’t count how many have died at my hands. The names, the faces, they’re all just blurred into one. You should just let me go, I don’t deserve your grace.”

He feels Steve go tense beneath him and he twists his head to look up, his breath caught in his chest.

“The man who did those things isn’t you, Bucky. He’s not the man I grew up with, the one who I fought alongside. That man is a fabrication, same as what happened with Barton. It was not you,” he replies, emphasis heavy on those last four words. “James Buchanan Barnes you are not evil and I will tell you this every day if I have to until you believe it.”

Bucky looks at Steve, the same scrawny kid from Brooklyn in a brand new body and lets himself believe, if just for a second, that there might be a light in all this darkness, an anchor while he’s lost at sea, and it’s standing right in front of him, rescuing him.


End file.
